The Real Meaning of Life Lies in Whatever Life Gives You, Says Viktor Frankl
A simple purpose protects you from suffering.
Viktor Frankl was so lucky he survived Auschwitz and three other concentration camps. This 30-something Jewish doctor also lost his parents and wife in one.
But the atrocities of war still didn’t break him. In fact, his experience might have inspired him to revolutionize psychiatry and embrace life until the age of 92.
Nowadays we know him as the father of logotherapy. It is a cognitive therapy that helps you deal with the hardships by clinging to the meaning you give to your life. It’s not something you discover in your soul, but in how you interpret events around you. This very attitude helped Frankl survive the Holocaust.
He firmly believed you can turn your suffering into an accomplishment with a few psychological techniques. One of them is paradoxical intention.
Paradoxical Intention: Cure Your Angst by Laughing at Your Neurotic Fear
This technique works best against obsessions and anticipatory anxiety.
It makes you want to do what you are most afraid of. If you’re scared of blushing when around others, then try to blush as red as you can. If you’re afraid you won’t be able to fall asleep, try not to sleep at all!
The point is to engage in your unease and see you’re still alive after it. Try to intentionally do and even exaggerate it. Be ironic, ridicule your anxiety, laugh at your paralyzing fear. This way you’ll decrease how serious your situation is. Paradoxical intention helps you stop expecting the worst, so you won’t get even more anxious about it.
Another technique is to be positive when everything is falling apart.
Tragic Optimism: Acknowledge You Are Suffering but Also Find Meaning and Hope in It
With Frankl’s logotherapy, you look for a reason to be happy. It’s what helped our great-grandparents survive poverty and wars, and what most young people are missing today.
